I drove from Petra to Wadi Rum, a rugged desert nature reserve a short drive south. I checked in at the Visitor's Center, where I had to pay a 2 JD fee for entry. I gave them the name and phone number of my guide, whom they called and who said he would meet me at the guest house down the road.
The guest house was little restaurant with a few one-man tents out back. I spent my first night in Wadi Rum in one of those tents, not a very happy experience. The temperature dipped below freezing, and a strong wind blew icy sleet through a hole in the top of my tent. But there aren't any other accomadations in Wadi Rum. Call it trekking or ecotourism or just "roughing it," that's what Wadi Rum is all about.
After the first night, I met my guide, Radi, and started a two-day tour of the desert. Years ago, I spent a few days in Baya Concepcion, in Baja California. It was a big, crescent-shaped bay, fairly shallow, dotted with tiny islands. The islands were only a few hundred meters across and about a kilomer apart from one another. I spent most of the day in a kayak, paddling from one island to the next. Here in Wadi Rum, far from any ocean, that memory came back to me. Wadi Rum is a desert filled with red and yellow sand. And scattered across this desert are small mountains, little islands of rock in a red desert sea. While my guide drove me between the mountains in an ancient Toyota pick-up, I had the same feeling I got when I paddled between the islands in Baya Concepcion.
I got my first taste of rock climbing in Wadi Rum. My guide, Radi, took me to a stone arch at the eastern end of the park. It was about 100 meters tall and not very easy to reach. The sandstone sides were smooth and steep, almost vertical. It didn't have any obvious handholds, just small divots a few centimeters deep, deep enough to grip with fingers or toes, but not big enough to plant a whole hand or foot. Radi showed me the easiest climbing path and sent me up. I got up about ten meters before I lost my nerve. I stopped and looked down and thought, if I fall right now, I'm going to die. And it was true. There wasn't any soft patch of sand beneath me. It was solid rock. Falling ten meters onto a slab of sandstone doesn't result in a broken arm. It results in a corpse. That thought became a fact. Then it became a certainty. I couldn't get it out of my head. So I pressed my body against the rock and crawled back down. I was defeated.
Radi was disappointed. He thought I would make it to the top, but I didn't even get halfway. He didn't say anything to me. He just shook his head and walked back to the truck. I looked at him, and I looked at the arch. I looked at the climb path, and I looked at the arch. I looked at myself, and I looked at the arch. God dammit, I didn't care about the fall anymore. I didn't care if I fell twice. I wasn't going to pussy out on what ought to be the greatest physical challenge of my life. Whatever it took, I was going to get to the top of that god damn arch.
So I went back to the arch's base. I spent a long time just looking at the climb path, mapping out the divots in the rock. I jammed my right hand into one divot, wrapped my left hand around a jutting rock, dug in my feet, and pulled myself up. I slipped a few times. I scraped both my knees and tore some skin off my hands. Step by step, I pulled myself up that mountain. Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the arch and looking out over the whole desert. It was such a rush. I was so thrilled that I spent half an hour just staring at it all. In fact, for the whole trip, the only picture I have of myself is at the top of that arch. I wanted to take a picture just to prove I'd been there. By the time I got back to the ground, I was hooked. I climbed up, on and over every boulder, crevice and hill I could find. Rock climbing is my new hobby.
I learned a new word in Wadi Rum--friable. That's what the brochure says. "Many of the stone formations in Wadi Rum are friable." I never heard that word before. I was 50 meters up the side of a mountain when I learned what friable meant. I had my left hand jammed into a large hole and my left foot planted on a tiny ledge. My right hand was wrapped around a fist-sized chunk of sandstone that stuck out from the rock face. My right leg was hanging loose and trying to get traction on a small divot about waist high. I couldn't quite get my right foot into that divot. So with my three other limbs, I heaved and pulled myself higher.
And then the rock broke loose. The rock in my right hand became.....friable. It broke off from the mountain and broke into three pieces in my hand. I dropped all three pieces and swung out from the mountain. Now I had my left hand and foot planted, but the whole right half of my body was swinging in space. I hung that way while the chunks of rock fell fifty meters down and shattered at the base of the mountain.
Friable [adjective] Loose and large-grained in consistency. Easily broken into small fragments or reduced to powder. Ex. 1:"The rock in Wadi Rum is friable." Ex. 2: "Climbers who don't pay attention to Ex. 1 may become friable."
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Posted by: Prakybetty | July 22, 2011 at 12:59 AM